“Don’t Pray – Go Gay”: Confronting the fundamentalists in Zurich

News, Sep 17th

Activists in Switzerland storm the stage at the homophobic and anti-abortion “March for Life” event

~ from Barrikade ~

As they do every year, this September too, the fundamentalists crawled out of every hole of their contempt for humanity to Oerlikon (Zurich, Switzerland) to demonstrate against the basic human right to a safe abortion. And as every year, only a huge police presence made the demonstration possible.

In addition to the inhumane slogans against abortion, the organisers and participants of the “March for Life” openly and violently incite against queer people. They portray the realities of queer people’s lives as a threat to their conservative constructs such as fatherland, Christianity and traditional family. And when they openly take their hate speech to the streets, protected and supported by cops, then the threat becomes real, because we — the faggots, transsexuals and tomboys — will not allow our self-determination and freedom to be taken away from us.

Nevertheless, the followers of fundamentalist Christianity try again every year. The emphasis in the previous sentence should be on the word “try” — because anyone who marches through Zurich with such inhumane content can be sure of one thing: where the fundamentalists are, resistance is not far away.

As part of this resistance, activists sneaked into the fundamentalist demonstration to storm the stage with a banner and make a statement against their right-wing agitation. This action is one of many acts of resistance to show that the fundamentalists and their ideas are not welcome in Zurich or anywhere else.

Our resistance is stronger than their demonstration, their cops and their Christianity. Whether we want children or not is up to u

 

Bulgaria’s LGBTQ+ community fights for its existence

News, Sep 23rd

The legislature has rushed through a law that mirrors Russia’s notorious “gay propaganda” legislation

~ from You Are Not (A)lone ~

In the heart of Sofia, under a sky that couldn’t decide between sun and rain, a rainbow flag fluttered defiantly. It was the penultimate day of what had become a grueling week-long protest against a draconian new law that threatened to silence Bulgaria’s LGBTQ+ community. The air was thick with tension, the kind that precedes a storm – or a revolution.

“We are here, we are queer, they can’t make us disappear!” The chant rose from a sea of faces, some painted in vibrant hues, others etched with determination. Among them was Stefi, her eyes scanning the perimeter nervously. Just hours earlier, she had received a death threat – one of many that had been hurled at the protesters like poisoned darts.

“I’ve been on the streets for five days now,” Stefi confided, her voice barely audible above the din of the protest. “We’ve been spat on, cursed at, had bottles thrown at us. One of my friends was kicked in the stomach by a Nazi provocateur.” She paused, her gaze distant. “But we keep singing, we keep shouting. It’s what we have to do.”

The protest was a last-ditch effort to challenge a law that mirrors Russia’s notorious “gay propaganda” legislation – a law that the European Union has twice declared unconstitutional. Yet, in a chilling echo of authoritarianism, the Bulgarian parliament had rushed it through, passing it in two readings within a single day, silencing the voices of those it would most affect.

As night fell, the shadows seemed to come alive. A group of 30 neo-Nazis materialized, circling the protesters like wolves. The police, conspicuous in their absence throughout the week, remained passive bystanders to the unfolding drama.

“The municipality can’t have two protests at the same place,” explained Stefan, another protester, his voice tinged with bitter irony. “They just wanted to put us at risk, to show us how pathetic and meaningless we are”.

The next day, the final day of the protest, brought a surreal twist. Another group, ostensibly protesting road violence, had been granted permission to occupy the same space. The LGBTQ+ protesters found themselves being asked to tone down their music, to make themselves smaller, less visible.

In a moment of raw vulnerability, one protester attempted to extend an olive branch, asking if they could show support for the other group’s cause. The response was swift and cruel – they were asked to leave, escorted away by the same police who had turned a blind eye to the violence against them all week.

This series of events unfolded against the backdrop of an open letter penned by the Solidarity Circle “You Are Not (A)lone”, a group uniting survivors of various forms of violence and discrimination. The letter, addressed to the Bulgarian public, laid bare the insidious nature of the new legislation and the broader anti-gender movement sweeping across Europe.

“What we are witnessing,” the letter states, “is a clear attempt to advance the covert agenda of the global populist movement against democracy, human rights, and prevention of social abuse of power and control”. The letter goes on to debunk the deceptive claims used to justify the legislation, exposing them as part of a larger strategy to mislead the public and obstruct progress in fighting discrimination and violence.

As the sun set on the final day of the protest, the air heavy with unrealized hopes, one couldn’t help but be reminded of James Baldwin’s prescient words: “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist”.

In Bulgaria, it seems, the right to exist is still something the LGBTQ+ community must fight for, one rainbow flag at a time.

But the story doesn’t end here. As we go to press, reports are emerging of continued harassment, of protesters being recognised and targeted on social media. The urgency of their situation cannot be overstated.

“Sharing is caring”, one protester told me, her eyes shining with a mixture of fear and determination. “We need the world to know what’s happening here. We need help”.

As the international community turns its gaze to this corner of Eastern Europe, one question looms large: Will the arc of Bulgaria’s moral universe bend towards justice, or will the shadows of intolerance extinguish the rainbow’s vibrant hues?

The answer, it seems, lies not just in the halls of power in Sofia, but in the hearts and minds of people around the world who believe in the fundamental right of all humans to live, love, and exist freely.

For now, in the streets of Sofia, a chant continues to echo: “We’re here, we’re queer, they can’t make us disappear”.

 

Trial begins in Italy student murder case that opened eyes to femicide


By AFP

September 23, 2024


People attend the funeral of Giulia Cecchettin, a university student killed by her ex-boyfriend, on December 5, 2023 in Padova - Copyright AFP Rabih DAHER
Alexandria SAGE

A major femicide trial opens in Italy Monday, after the brutal murder of a university student by her ex-boyfriend that triggered outrage and national soul-searching over the roots of male violence against women.

The grisly stabbing in November of Giulia Cecchettin, 22, a biomedical engineering student at the University of Padua, cast a grim spotlight on femicide in Italy, where the vast majority of victims are killed at the hands of their current or former partners.

The accused, Filippo Turetta, 22, has confessed before a judge to the murder of Cecchettin.

Turetta, who risks life in prison, is not expected to appear in the Venice courtroom on Monday.

According to official statistics, a woman is killed every three days in Italy, a majority-Catholic country where traditional gender roles still hold sway and where sexist behaviour by men is often downplayed.

Cecchettin, who was due to graduate just days after her death, was reported missing on November 11 after accompanying Turetta to a mall and never returning home.

After video cameras near Cecchettin’s home revealed images of Turetta attacking her violently before fleeing with her in his car, police launched a week-long manhunt.

Her body was found on November 18 in a gully near Lake Barcis, about 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of Venice. Her head and neck were punctured with over 70 stab wounds, according to media reports citing the autopsy.

Turetta was arrested a day later on the side of the road near Leipzig, Germany after his car ran out of petrol.

Marking what activists hoped would be a turning point, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across Italian cities on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, calling for cultural change.

Cecchettin’s sister, Elena, has denounced the “patriarchy” and “rape culture” prevalent in Italian society.

“Rape culture is what legitimises every behaviour that goes to harm the figure of the woman, starting with the things that sometimes are not even given importance such as control, possessiveness, catcalling,” Elena Cecchettin wrote in Il Corriere della Sera daily after her sister’s death.

At Cecchettin’s funeral in Padua, her father Gino called for his daughter’s death to be a “turning point to end the terrible scourge of violence against women”, imploring men to “challenge the culture that tends to minimise violence by men who appear normal”.

– ‘I am guilty’ –


The trial is expected to be relatively brief, with Turetta having waived his right to a preliminary hearing after his confession.

Turetta faces charges including voluntary manslaughter aggravated by premeditation and kidnapping, and others related to stalking and hiding Cecchettin’s body.

Excerpts of Turetta’s questioning before a judge on December 1 were broadcast last week on the Channel 4’s “Quarto Grado” in which he is seen admitting “I am responsible, I am guilty. I am responsible for these acts, yes”.

In a quiet voice, Turetta explains how Cecchettin rejected his offer of a gift of a stuffed animal, telling him she wanted to break off their relationship and prompting an argument in the car, which she fled.

Turetta describes how he grabbed a knife and stabbed her in the arm, before dragging her back in the car, from which she later escaped.

“I gave her, I don’t know, about 10, 12, 13, I don’t know, several blows with the knife,” Turetta says in the video.

According to the interior ministry, 120 women were murdered in Italy last year, of whom 97 were killed by family members or current or former partners.

Comparisons with other European countries are difficult due to inconsistent data, but the issue has recently also risen to the forefront in various European countries, especially France.

Following Cecchettin’s death, Italy’s parliament adopted a package of bills to strengthen existing laws to protect women, but activists say cultural change requires much more, starting with compulsory education on the topic in schools.

A July 2021 report from the government’s department of gender equality found that “in some regions of Italy up to 50 percent of men consider violence in relationships to be acceptable.”

Global Economy

The Battle Over U.S. Inflation and Its Real Cause


For all the focus on inflation ahead of the November U.S. presidential election, the debasement of the U.S. currency is the root of the U.S. cost of living crisis. And that is a bipartisan issue.

September 23, 2024
By Alexei Bayer

THE GLOBALIST




Mark my words: The upcoming U.S. presidential election will likely be won or lost on the issue of inflation.

Blame game under way

Given that, it is unsurprising that a big blame game is under way among Democrats and Republicans.

Of course, the Republicans point out that the cost of food and lodging, which is what most voters care about daily, has gone up by at least 30% over the past three years. They say it’s Joe Biden’s fault.

For their part, the Democrats say that inflation has been a global phenomenon. Indeed, inflationary pressures got out of control in every country of the world during the recovery from the Covid 19 pandemic and after Russia invaded Ukraine.

In any case, they argue, inflation has declined – and the U.S. Federal Reserve is poised to start cutting interest rates.

The true cause of the cost-of-living crisis

However, there is one factor neither party addresses: The debasement of the U.S. currency. It is the true cause of the current U.S. cost of living crisis.

Currency debasement was common when money consisted of gold and silver coins. When monarchs needed to raise funds, they resorted to reducing the amount of the precious metal in their coins. You would still get the same gold sovereign from the mint, but it would contain 20% less gold.

The dangerous temptations of fiat money

Later on, when fiat money – i.e., paper currency not backed by any tangible asset – came about, the idea was that money would be issued strictly in proportion to economic growth.

Thus, if the economy produced 5% more goods and services in a given year, it was assumed that the monetary base would be expanded by the same 5%.

However, fiat money was also an open invitation to abuse. If a government wanted to give tax cuts to voters, for example, or import oodles of cheap Chinese consumer goods, or finance a tech revolution, it could just print more money.

Then, once you ran into a financial crisis because plenty of money encouraged dangerous speculation and created financial bubbles – just turn on the printing press and drown the system in even more money.

No free lunch for the U.S. forever

Other countries play this game at their peril – because eventually foreigners will refuse to accept their currencies or give them loans. This is what regularly happens to Argentina, Brazil and other profligate countries.

But the United States has the almighty dollar, which is the international reserve currency and the lynchpin of the global financial system.

And so it went. Ronald Reagan, while railing against “tax and spend Democrats,” spent lavishly on the military, while his Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan obligingly opened the monetary spigot.

When Reagan assumed office in January 1981, U.S. government debt amounted to around 30% of GDP. When he left, it was 50%.

Monetary vodka for U.S. financial markets

More important, Reagan and Greenspan created a dangerous pattern: The government would prime the fiscal pump and the Fed would loosen monetary policy to accommodate extra government spending.

William McChesney Martin, who had been the Fed president during the age of American prosperity from 1951 to 1960, famously said that the Fed’s job was “to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going.” In other words, the Fed was supposed to raise interest rates to prevent economic overheating and financial excesses.

Starting with Greenspan, the Fed has been plying financial markets with monetary vodka.

The big-spending Bushes

During his one term in the Oval Office, George Bush, Sr. – another Republican – boosted U.S. debt to 62% of GDP.

After him, Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was able to reduce U.S. debt to 54% by the start of the new century. But with the arrival of George W. Bush the true monetary orgy began. It has not stopped since.

Having implemented a massive tax cut at the start of his administration, Bush Jr. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq without bothering to raise money for his military adventures. He promptly ran up U.S. debt back to where his father had left off.

Worse, the plethora of cheap money created a real estate bubble which blew up in 2008, the last year of Bush Jr.’s presidency, triggering a disastrous financial crisis and a global economic downturn.

Barack Obama was faced with the possibility of another economic Depression, which was avoided when he and Ben Bernanke, his Fed president, started, to use Bernanke’s phrase, to drop money out of helicopters. They did right the economic ship but raised U.S. public debt to 100% of GDP.

Crossing the 100% threshold

By the time Donald Trump was elected, the cooperation of the profligate government with the profligate Fed was well established. The cost of Trump’s tax cut, estimated at $1.7 trillion, pushed the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio to 105% by the end of 2018.

Curiously, Trump followed directly in Bush’s policy footsteps. He slashed government revenues with a tax cut at the start of his presidency and ran into a major crisis at the end, when his administration mismanaged the Covid 19 pandemic.

By the time Joe Biden alleviated the resulting economic crisis, U.S. debt amounted to 125% of GDP.

A study by the Center for American Progress found that without the tax cuts by Bush and Trump, the U.S. public debt ratio would have continued to fall as it did under the Clinton administration.

And even though, due to pressing economic circumstances, money had to be printed lavishly under the Obama and Biden administrations, it was largely the response to the mess their Republican predecessors had left them.

Beyond partisan angles

The result of all this is that the U.S. currency has become debased. The old compliment — “you look like a million dollars” — now sounds more like an insult.

Successive U.S. administrations and Fed presidents have turned the dollar into a commodity. Its value depends on a supply-demand relationship, which means that the more dollars are printed, the less valuable they become.

How the U.S. is like Russia and Saudi Arabia

This makes the United States a massive producer of the commodity called the dollar – in much the same way that Saudi Arabia or Russia pump oil out of the ground.

But most oil producers also have corrupt governments and have huge wealth disparities — grotesquely enriching some, while everyone else is pauperized.

Given the fact that the U.S. commodity is money, the consequences of this commodity economy are clear for all to see. Those who are active in financial markets — either as finance professionals or those who monetize their businesses in the stock market — have become the superrich, while much of the rest of the country is having trouble making ends meet.

A different kind of inflation

The United States had high inflation in the 1970s, but it was a different kind of inflation. Prices went up and triggered wage increases in their wake, even though there was no offsetting increase in productivity. More money was chasing the same quantity of goods and services, creating a vicious cycle.

Inflation which results from the debasement of currency is different. Those lucky enough to find themselves near the financial trough can make money at will.

Only the top benefits

They are the beneficiaries of the debasement process. Even though prices of yachts, vineyards, private planes, Maseratis, Swiss watches and works of art, along with tuition at top-flight colleges and universities and other luxury goods, are rising much faster than the overall inflation level, they have been more than compensated by their rising wealth.

Reaganomics postulated a “trickle-down” effect for wealth creation. Under this concept, more money for the rich would translate into higher incomes for everyone else.

The reality has been quite different. What has trickled down is the rising cost of living for ordinary consumers who are being paid with debased dollars.

Conclusion

Donald Trump has no plans to change this. He will actually exacerbate the situation.

But the Democrats will also have trouble solving the cost of living crisis – unless they are able to reverse the nearly half-century of fiscal and monetary profligacy and restore the trust in paper currency.

Author    

Alexei Bayer
Alexei Bayer is a Senior Editor at The Globalist, based in New York. [United States]

A Strategic Intervention Paper (SIP) from the Global Ideas Center


You may quote from this text, provided you mention the name of the author and reference it as a new Strategic Intervention Paper (SIP) published by the Global Ideas Center in Berlin on The Globalist.

Essay

Sci-Fi’s Lessons in Neutrality

By Suspending Reality, We Can Better See What Is Possible

Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher. Courtesy of Netflix.

TECHNICALLY THIS IS FANTASY A SUB GENRE OF SCI FI


By Matías Graffigna | September 23, 2024


Can we, and should we, ever really be neutral? In a new series, Zócalo explores the idea of neutrality—in politics, sports, gender, journalism, international law, and more. In this essay, philosopher Matías Graffigna explains how science fiction and fantasy can help us contemplate a wider range of possibilities.

“I just wanted to be honest. I don’t want to get mixed up in this conflict. I want to remain neutral,” Geralt of Rivia tells his good friend Yarpen, a dwarf. “It’s impossible!” yells Yarpen in response. “It’s impossible to remain neutral, don’t you understand that? No, you don’t understand anything.”

Geralt, the monster-hunting protagonist in The Witcher fantasy series by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, believes that it’s better to abstain from conflict than to participate in events without fully understanding their consequences. But Yarpen has chosen to take a side and fight against the rebel Scoia’tael forces, sees good and evil, just cause and oppression. Thus, he finds Geralt’s refusal to fight injustice unacceptable, indifferent, and cowardly: “Get out of my sight with your arrogant neutrality,” he tells Geralt.

Their heated exchange helps us to think of neutrality as an attitude one can adopt. This attitude consists of an initial approach to any given conflict, in which you abstain from choosing any one side. Whether this choice arises from careful consideration or indifference is something distinct from neutrality itself.

When it comes to interesting and responsible ways of being neutral, fiction, particularly the sci-fi and fantasy kind, can help us contemplate a wider, more exciting range of possibilities than reality.

The reason for this is quite simple: not everything that is possible is actual. But if we think we know what is possible based only on what is actual, we are closing ourselves off to an honest examination.
Being neutral is a conscious attempt at canceling prejudices, at not judging before we know enough to do so. It is an honest attempt at submerging ourselves in the fictional world and its whole range of sensations.

When we pick up a sci-fi or fantasy novel with this “let’s see” attitude, we are practicing the rather technical concept of “neutrality modification.” The term was coined by philosopher Edmund Husserl, who claimed that the exercise could open a realm of investigation into the very nature of our consciousness, experience, and perception. Say we’re observing an orange on a counter. Our experience amounts to a visual perception of an existing object. In perception, we commit to the existence of the perceived object. But if we operate a neutrality modification upon that act of perception, Husserl would say, we have as a result “a neutral orange”: an orange that neither exists nor ceases to exist. An orange that is indifferent to the question of existence.

By reading so-called fantastical literature with the attitude of neutrality modification, we allow ourselves to embark on an exploration of the possibility realm: If we are on Mars, we resist the thought that tells us, “That’s impossible!” If we are in Narnia, we ignore the idea, “There’s no such thing as magic!” By temporarily suspending our beliefs about what is real and accepting the world the author offers, we see how possible we find it. We see how possible it feels to us.

Judging what is possible is a hard exercise, one that might engage physicists and logicians. But we can all consider and analyze what could be when it comes to thinking about human nature, right and wrong, forms of political organization, or relating to one another. We can, in other words, speculate. Speculation might be the summit of the human being’s ability to reason abstractly. But it is also an activity that profits from what philosophers like to call intuition, “direct contact” with the thing we are thinking about. In the same way that a memory can give us back the feeling we once had, albeit not so intensely, the human faculty of fantasy allows us to have a certain experience of that which is not (yet?) actual.

The fantasy and science fiction genres, also known as “speculative fiction,” are authored by professional speculators who spend their lives asking “What if…?” Their kind of fiction builds a possible world full of intuitions. These stories trigger in us the feeling of something we have never really felt. They allow us to better grasp what we mean when we say some things might truly be different from how they actually are. They help us reconsider why we think that certain other things should be deemed impossible.

The worlds of fantasy and science fiction are filled with the exploration of possibilities. They invite us to experience the extent of such possibilities not just rationally but affectively, intuitively, presently.

If you feel like traveling into the realm of the possible, do so with a neutral attitude. Forget that the world in which you live exists and is just how it is. Being neutral is a conscious attempt at canceling prejudices, at not judging before we know enough to do so. It is an honest attempt at submerging ourselves in the fictional world and its whole range of sensations. Neutralize your prior beliefs and let the author and their ideas penetrate you. Dive into their worlds and their stories. Live through the characters and pay attention to how these inhabitants of other (perhaps) possible worlds, think, feel, and act.

It does not matter if the possible will one day become actual. It does not matter if you think you know better. Be neutral. Be open to what is offered and allow yourself to live in a different, possible world. Be neutral, and you might be changed in ways you would not have thought possible.


Matías Graffignais a writer and philosopher who researches Husserlian phenomenology and science fiction.

PRIMARY EDITOR: Jackie Mansky | SECONDARY EDITOR: Sarah Rothbard

Zócalo

Muslim mayor in Michigan endorses Trump for US president, creating challenge for Democrats

A Muslim mayor in Michigan has endorsed Donald Trump for president, possibly creating more difficulty for the Democrats to win the critical swing state.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO WASTE YOUR VOTE IN PROTEST 

VOTE GREEN


Brooke Anderson
Washington, DC
23 September, 2024

GAWD HE'S OLD, LOOK AT THE TURKEY NECK HE HAS


A Muslim mayor in the state of Michigan has endorsed Donald Trump for president, possibly creating more difficulty for the Democrats to win the critical swing state in November.

Amer Ghalib, a Yemeni immigrant who made headlines three years ago when he became the first Muslim and Arab mayor of a Muslim-majority-run US city, Hamtramck in southeastern Michigan, had reportedly been courted in recent weeks by Trump to endorse him, a decision he finally made on Sunday.

"He knew a lot about me before the meeting," Ghalib told The Detroit News.

"We talked about various topics including the debates, the polls updates, the statistics of votes in Michigan and Wayne County, the Arab American concerns and the Yemeni Americans in particular. We also talked about the situation in Yemen," the mayor added.

This new endorsement has created yet another challenge for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who has been trying to make inroads with Arab and Muslim voters as she treads carefully on the issue of Israel's war in Gaza, which has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians in the dense enclave since last October.

The war, which is nearing its one-year mark with no end in sight, has become a major focus of the 2024 US presidential election, with the US as the Israel's main weapons supplier that has increased support for its ally over the last year—a position that has fractured the Democratic Party between progressives and the establishment.

Recent reports show Harris in a dead heat with Green Party candidate Jill Stein among Muslim voters. A late August survey of Muslim voters conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that 29.4 percent of US Muslim voters plan to vote for Harris, while 29.1 percent plan to vote for Stein. This is followed by 11.2 percent planning to vote for Trump, with the remainder preferring other candidates.

Overall, the two main party candidates are nearly tied in Michigan, with Harris showing a slight lead in most of the state's polls, though falling within the margin of error.

Beyond his recent public statements, it's unclear why Ghalib decided to endorse Trump.

However, given Hamtramck's recent positions in culture war debates relating to gender identity and gay rights, which made national headlines when the city banned the pride flag on public property last year, it's possible that Trump was able to appeal to the mayor's or the city's social conservatism.

Trump, who hadn't had much in the way of rallies scheduled at the end of the week, appeared to have two new Michigan events scheduled by the end of the day on Sunday.

Why 'Comrade Kamala' memes are spreading among Latino exiles

Ione Wells and Jessica Cruz
BBC News


In Latino exile communities across the country, a question is being asked: is Kamala Harris really a communist?

The vice-president has been the subject of numerous misleading claims that she is a socialist or communist since becoming the Democratic candidate for president, according to the US’s largest Spanish-language fact-checker Factchequeado.

Experts say these claims capitalise on "genuine fears" held by some voters who fled repression in countries like Cuba and Venezuela.

In one viral video, Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz appear to pose for a selfie in front of a sign for Revolutionary Communists of America, a far-left group.

The video was fake. The background had been doctored by a group of Donald Trump’s supporters known as the Dilley Meme Team.

Their original post had more than 420,000 views, but it was shared by many Spanish accounts - and repeated offline.

“It’s everywhere, this doubt: ‘Is this person a communist?’” Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, a cultural context strategist from south Florida, told the BBC.

She was listening to the Spanish-language radio station La Nueva Poderosa in Miami when she heard the hosts discussing the false meme.

“Did you see them standing in front of that picture? They have no shame in who they are,” the hosts said.

She contacted the station to point out it was a fake video. The hosts later said on air that they wanted to clarify the story was “not true” but that “doesn’t take away from the reality that Kamala is a Marxist”.

'Genuine fears' being weaponised


There are nearly 36.2 million eligible Latino voters in America, about 14.7% of the US electorate, and many live in key swing states like Nevada and Arizona, which makes them a coveted demographic for both campaigns.

They are by no means a homogeneous voting demographic, but historically, Latinos have tended to favour the Democrats. In 2020, 44% voted for Joe Biden, with only 16% voting for Trump. But polls show Republicans have gained ground this election cycle, with many factors cited including the economy, immigration, and abortion rights.

And for some immigrants, concerns about America today reflect their past experiences in their home countries.

Political messages warning about “socialism” or “communism” have been particularly prevalent in communities with large Cuban and Venezuelan populations, like in south Florida, experts noted.

These expats are especially vulnerable to misinformation about communism because of the trauma they experienced fleeing repression, said Samantha Barrios, a Venezuelan-American based in Miami, Florida, who votes Democrat.

She accused right-leaning Spanish media of using these terms to “scare Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans” because of “the main reason that we left our countries, trying to leave these regimes”.

For some, their criticism of the Democrats is grounded in opinions that the US government has not provided a tough enough response to political repression in Cuba or Venezuela.

But Ms Barrio is wary of the way these legitimate concerns are being weaponised through “false claims” that Kamala Harris herself is a communist.

Ms Pérez-Verdía agrees, but she also criticised the Democrat campaign for not doing enough to address their concerns.

“Don’t laugh off people’s fears. It’s really disrespectful. People have genuine fears, they came to the United States, they left everything behind. If they have doubts you should address their doubts.”

Debate fuels 'communist' claims

X/AI-generated image


Not all claims exclusively target Latinos, said the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA), which monitors more than 1,300 WhatsApp groups and more than 200 Telegram channels in Spanish and Portuguese.

And notable right-wing and pro-Trump actors and influencers have pushed a “fear of socialism” since 2020, the organisation found.

But while Joe Biden was accused of being a communist when he ran for president, Factchequeado’s founder, Laura Zommer, said their fact checkers had “never” seen this volume of AI and doctored images before.

Some of this misinformation has been spread by Trump himself, or his high-profile supporters.

Elon Musk, who has endorsed Trump, posted a faked image of Kamala Harris in a red uniform emblazoned with the communist hammer and sickle, captioned “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?”

It had more than 83.9 million views. A reverse image search suggests this was the earliest posting of the image on X.

Donald Trump shared an AI image of Harris addressing a communist crowd that had at least 81.5 million views on X, but it was not the first posting of this image.

Posts linking Harris to communism really took off online after the presidential debate, according a report by the DDIA prepared for the BBC.

During the debate, Donald Trump called Kamala Harris and her father a “Marxist” and suggested she would turn the US into “Venezuela on steroids” through her immigration policies.

After the debate, “Marxista” trended on social media and searches for "Marxist" on Google in the US jumped 1000% in 17 hours.

Factchequeado said the most searched question in Spanish after the debate was: "Who is Kamala Harris’s father?"
X
BBC Verify traced the membership card image to a website which allows people to make fake communist party documents

The DDIA said two claims especially gained traction in the week after the presidential debate. In one, a fabricated document falsely claiming Kamala Harris is a member of the Russian communist party went viral, according to Meta’s own metrics. Another claim, that Harris is “Kamarada [Comrade] Kamala”, arose from a Trump speech in which he portrays her as a “communist comrade”.

BBC Verify traced the membership card image to a website which allows people to make fake communist party documents.

The membership number, stamp and other details on the card were identical to a template on the site for making a party membership card.

Posts sharing the fake image, which was first shared in August, have been viewed more than half a million times.

'We'll slide into communism'

Republicans have been gaining ground with Latino voters in recent years

The Democratic Party is not a socialist party, nor does it claim to support communist regimes. But some high-profile members like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have described their political views as “democratic socialist”.

When she was a California senator, Harris co-sponsored Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, which would have brought a single-payer health care system to the US. She has since said she no longer supports a single-payer health-care system, which would have abolished private insurers.

She has never advocated for communist policies, such as the abolition or seizure of private property.

Kamala Harris’s plan to crackdown on “price gouging” at supermarkets has been cited in Spanish social media posts as “communist”. Mr Musk claimed it would mean “empty shelves, just like in Venezuela”.

Her proposal, which would involve asking the trade commission to investigate price spikes far above the increase in the cost of production, is a far cry from the widespread price controls seen in Cuba and Venezuela that were in part blamed for severe food shortages.

But for some voters who fled those countries, their fear lies in anything they feel remotely resembles policies from the countries they came from.

Duke Machado, who runs a Latino Republican Facebook page from Texas called Latino Strikeforce, said he fears that if the Democrats win, the country would be on a slippery slope to communism.

“If we’re not careful, we’ll slide into Cuba and Venezuela. Their ultimate goal is to destroy capitalism."

When asked if it was responsible to share fears that the Democrats could turn the US into a communist country with his followers, including Latino exiles who had fled repression, he said: “It’s not irresponsible at all. I see it as a duty.”

With additional reporting by Kayleen Devlin from BBC Verify


More on the US election
SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election
FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger under Biden or Trump?
POLICIES: What Harris or Trump would do in power
POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?



North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Cambodia Pulls Out of Economic Agreement With Vietnam and Laos

Phnom Penh’s withdrawal from the CLV Triangle Development Area pact marks a potentially important shift in Cambodia-Vietnam relations

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By Sebastian Strangio
September 23, 2024

Credit: ID 49829279 | Cambodia Vietnam © Hans Slegers | Dreamstime.com

Cambodia has withdrawn from a two-decade-old regional economic development agreement with Vietnam and Laos, in a rare concession to opponents who claimed the pact had led to an erosion of Cambodian sovereignty.

On Friday, Prime Minister Hun Manet posted a statement to his Facebook page in which he said that his government had decided to pull out of the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam (CLV) Triangle Development Area, and had notified Vietnam and Laos of its decision.

While hailing the agreement’s “many achievements,” he accused “extremists” of using the deal as “a political weapon” to attack the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) by alleging it had led to a loss of land and sovereignty to Vietnam.

“Taking into account people’s concerns about territory… we have decided that Cambodia is ending its participation in the CLV-DTA from September 20, 2024, onwards,” Manet wrote, according to a translation from the AFP news agency. He also cited the “political necessity to disarm the extremists and prevent them from using the CLV-DTA to deceive the Cambodian people further.”

The CLV agreement, which was signed in 1999 and entered into force in 2004, was designed to develop 13 once-remote border provinces, including five in Vietnam, four in Cambodia, and four in Laos.

In a letter to its counterparts in Hanoi and Vientiane, the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “the cooperation mandate has reached its objectives.” Accordingly, “each country is fully capable of continuing and ensuring the development of its respective nation independently.”

Concerns about the CLV agreement began circulating on Cambodian social media back in July, with critics claiming that the agreement had led Cambodia to cede territory and control of natural resources in its four northeastern provinces. On August 11, several thousand Cambodians took part in protests against the CLV agreement in South Korea, Japan, Canada, and Australia.

When a similar protest was announced for August 18 in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, the government treated it as an existential threat. It deployed a heavy police presence around the country, and set up barricades to prevent people from traveling to the capital to attend the protest. The authorities also arrested at least 94 people in connection with the planned protest, according to the advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

The reaction spoke to the potency of the Vietnamese border as a mobilizing issue for the CPP’s opponents. As I noted last month, concerns about Vietnam – particularly, fears of encroachments into Cambodian territory and the effect of unrestricted Vietnamese immigration into border areas – have been an integral part of Cambodian nationalism since its gestation in the first half of the twentieth century. The issue has subsequently been one of the most potent lines of attack for opponents of the CPP, which was installed in power by Vietnam after its overthrow of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in January 1979, and has since retained close relations with Vietnam.

However, the fact that the government has swung from a defensive crackdown, in which the virtues of the CLV agreement were trumpeted by government-aligned media and chanted by schoolchildren, to a surprise concession to its critics, is a sign that a significant shift in Cambodia-Vietnam relations is underway.

This was already evident with regard to the China-backed Funan Techo Canal. The project, which broke ground in early August, will connect the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand, reducing Cambodia’s reliance on Vietnamese ports.

The project is set to have potentially deleterious impacts on Vietnam’s agriculturally productive Mekong Delta region, to say nothing of potential security implications. But Hun Manet’s administration has done little to assuage Vietnamese fears about the Funan Techo project, and refused to share information about its impacts.

Instead, Manet has described the project that will help Cambodia “breathe through our own nose” by reducing its economic reliance on Vietnam, depicted the completion of the project as a totem of nationalist pride, and stated that Cambodia does not need any other nation’s permission. In so doing, it has used rhetoric with a subtle, though unmistakable and historically familiar, anti-Vietnamese valence.

The fact that the government would now take the rare step of acceding to its opponents’ demands to withdraw from the CLV agreement reflects not just its perennial concern about being seen as a puppet of Hanoi. It also points to a possible reversion to the historical mean in terms of Cambodian relations with Vietnam, as China has come to eclipse Vietnam’s historically prominent position in the country.

The friendship between the CPP and its counterpart in Hanoi is historically anomalous. The relationship was forged in the 1980s – an era of hostility between China and the Soviet Union, then the patron of both Vietnam and its client state in Phnom Penh. More than four decades later, the geopolitical winds have changed: China is perhaps now the most dominant economic and political influence in Cambodia, giving the CPP the means of distancing itself from Vietnam and defusing long-standing claims that it dances to Hanoi’s tune. At the same time, many of the personal connections that undergirded the relationship between Vietnam and Cambodia have weakened as the older generation of officials has passed on.

Relations between Vietnam and Cambodia are not about to collapse into open acrimony; there are still enough mutual interests to keep things on an even keel. But it is increasingly evident that the kinship between Hanoi and Phnom Penh can no longer be taken for granted.

Over 40% of major companies, cities and regions still lack emission reduction targets, new report finds




23 September 2024

As the climate crisis accelerates, the annual Net Zero Stocktake 2024, co-led by the Blavatnik School’s Thomas Hale, highlights the lack of emission reduction targets from a significant proportion of companies, cities and regions.

The annual Stocktake reports net zero intent and integrity across all nations, all states and regions in the 25 largest-emitting countries, all cities with 500,000+ inhabitants, and the largest 2,000 publicly listed companies in the world.

While the number of these major companies, cities, and regions with targets has increased since the previous Net Zero Stocktake in June 2023, 40% of them still have no target, holding back progress on climate resilience.

“Net zero leaders may now be grappling with the hard work of implementation, but they are in a far better place than those who, remarkably, have yet to position themselves for a successful transition”, says Thomas Hale, Professor of Global Public Policy at the Blavatnik School.

“Major companies that have yet to set a net zero target are a time bomb for their employees and investors and a mounting financial risk for the economy overall—as well as the planet we all live on.”

The report also shows that there has been a limited improvement in net zero target “integrity”, which reviews, for example, whether targets cover all emitting activities, if there is a plan published and reporting on progress.

While the number of company targets meeting all minimum levels of integrity has increased since June 2023, 1,084 out of 1,145 major companies included are still failing to meet basic integrity levels.

There are some indicators of progress in the report. For example, 14 of the 20 regions in India have set a net zero target that is earlier than India’s national government’s 2070 net zero target. But the bigger message of the report is that there needs to be a step change in commitments to safeguard the climate for future generations.

The Net Zero Tracker is the most comprehensive and up-to-date database of net zero commitments made by nations, states & regions, cities and major companies. Using a combination of automated web data-scraping and manual searching by volunteer data analysts working in a range of languages, the Tracker gathers and collates data on the status of net zero targets, as well as robustness parameters, across more than 4000 entities (from nation states to companies to cities).

The Net Zero Tracker was inspired by, and draws on the methods used for, the Blavatnik School’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, conceived and led by Thomas with School colleagues.

 EXPLAINER

What’s behind India’s latest #MeToo movement in Malayalam cinema?

A probe panel’s report has lifted the veil on widespread sex abuse in the industry, with more women coming forward with allegations too.

Indian National Congress (INC) party workers wear masks of celebrities from the country's Kerala-based Mollywood film industry during a protest against the government's action over sexual allegations within the industry, in Kochi on August 30, 2024 [Arun Chandrabose/AFP]

By Al Jazeera Staff

Published On 23 Sep 202423 Sep 2024

A spate of allegations of sexual misconduct has rocked the film industry in India’s southern state of Kerala, triggering a flood of police cases and leading to calls for a broader reckoning within what is known as Mollywood.

The latest wave of the #MeToo movement, which first took off in 2017, erupted after the findings of an inquiry – into issues faced by men and women in the film industry – prepared by a government-appointed panel known as the Hema Committee, were published on August 19. The report unveiled rampant sexual abuse alongside other workplace violations against women who work in the Malayalam film industry. Malayalam is the dominant language of Kerala.

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Sexual harassment is “the worst evil” faced by women in the industry, the report, which spans more than 200 pages, said.

So, what’s happening in Malayalam cinema, what does the report say, and what’s next?

Why was the Hema Committee set up?

In February 2017, an actress was abducted and sexually assaulted by a group of men in a car when she was commuting in Kerala, which sits on India’s southern Malabar coast. The men recorded a video of the assault.

In response to this incident, 18 women from the Malayalam film industry came together under the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC). Malayalam actor Gopalakrishnan Padmanabhan – better known by his stage name Dileep – was arrested in July 2017 for allegedly orchestrating the assault. He was released on bail after three months. The court is still hearing the case.

Al Jazeera emailed Dileep’s lawyer, Raman Pillai, seeking responses to specific questions pertaining to the allegations against the actor, and those in the Hema Committee report. Pillai has not responded.

In November 2017, acting on an appeal from the WCC, the state government of Kerala established the three-member Hema Committee tasked with investigating issues faced by women and men working in the industry. The committee comprised retired Kerala High Court Justice K Hema, former actor Sharada and retired bureaucrat KB Valsala Kumari.

The committee gathered insights from male and female actors, makeup artists, cinematographers and other crew through online surveys and in-person interviews. Videos, screenshots and photos as potential evidence were also collected. Additionally, a member of the committee visited the shooting of a film released in 2019. This was done to study the environment on a film set.

What is the Hema Committee report?

In late 2019, the committee submitted its report to the state government. In late August 2024, a redacted version was made public, with the names of all victims and perpetrators removed.

The late release of the report was criticised by opposition politicians including Shashi Tharoor, a parliamentarian from the Congress party, who said in August: “It is utterly shameful and shocking that the government sat on this report for nearly five years now

The government said the report’s release was delayed because it contained sensitive information. “Justice Hema had written to the government on February 19, 2020, urging that the report not be released due to the sensitive nature of the information,” Kerala’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was quoted saying by local media in August.

Yet even with details withheld, the report led to shockwaves across India because of what it revealed.

“It’s not just reporting on sexual violence, it shows power equations of the industry, other kinds of violations like discrimination exploitation and retribution,” said J Devika, a feminist academic from Kerala.

What were the report’s key findings?

• “Denial of human rights to women in cinema”: On several film sets, women do not have access to changing rooms or toilets. This, the report found, causes health issues including urinary tract infections, and women on set “have landed up in hospitals on some occasions”.
• “Casting couch”: The report said that women in the industry, especially aspiring actresses, are pressured for sexual favours by actors, producers or directors in exchange for roles in films and other opportunities to advance their careers. Some witnesses produced video clips, audio clips and screenshots of WhatsApp messages to back their claims. The practice is shrouded in euphemism. “‘Compromise’ and ‘adjustment’ are two terms which are very familiar among women in Malayalam film industry,” the report said.
• Online harassment: Several women and men told the committee that they were harassed and trolled in online messages and social media posts. This trolling can be sexual in nature, where actresses receive threats of rape and assault alongside unsolicited images in their inboxes.
• Contract issues: Written contracts lack specific details about the nature of the scenes actors will be required to perform. Some actresses were quoted in the report as saying they were asked to do sexually explicit scenes they were uncomfortable doing, and had not been informed beforehand. Many women also do not get proper remuneration due to unclear contracts, the report said.

Among its recommendations, the report asks for the establishment of a judicial tribunal, which will function as a civil court and would allow women to file complaints.

The government has yet to establish such a tribunal, but it has formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into a flood of new allegations about past instances of sexual misconduct made by actresses following the report’s publication

Flood of allegations

After the report was published, many more Malayali actresses came forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault. Among them:

• Actress Minu Muneer lodged sexual misconduct complaints against seven actors on August 27, including Mukesh, who is also a state legislator from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which governs Kerala. He has denied the allegations against him and claimed that Muneer previously asked him for money and later tried to blackmail him. On August 27, local media quoted him as welcoming a transparent investigation and saying: “This group, which has been persistently blackmailing me for money, has now turned against me at this opportune moment”. Jayasurya, another of the actors accused by Muneer, has also denied the allegation.
• Sreelekha Mitra, an actress known best for her work in Bengali cinema, accused director Ranjith Balakrishnan of sexual harassment in 2009. The police registered a case against Balakrishnan on August 26. Balakrishnan has claimed these allegations are false, saying that he interacted with Mitra in the presence of a screenwriter and two assistants, according to the Indian digital publication The News Minute.

The entire executive committee of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA), led by one of Malayalam cinema’s biggest superstars, Mohanlal, resigned as some members were themselves implicated in accusations of sexual misconduct.

The SIT, which has received an unredacted version of the Hema Committee report, is now preparing for face-to-face interviews with the actresses who alleged harassment in the report.

What’s next?

Activists, already frustrated with the government’s five-year delay in making the Hema Committee report public, are calling for the names of the alleged perpetrators identified by the panel of experts to be made public.

Devika said it was a “gross violation of the law of the land” to shield their identities, adding that “it is not common for the accused to be protected in this way”.

She said more clarity was needed on how the tribunal recommended by the committee would function, cautioning against a mechanism that could undermine other institutions that deal with sexual harassment complaints.

“Top-down structures erode the credibility of the ones that already exist,” she argued.

Since 2013, Indian law has required every workplace with more than 10 employees to have an internal complaints committee to address issues of workplace sexual misconduct. In practice, however, the implementation of this law has been spotty.

In 2022, the Kerala High Court ordered film production houses to set up these committees. According to Devika, some of the committees are weak and ineffective. But under the law, complainants can also take their allegations to district-level local complaints committees.

Despite their flaws, internal and district committees are usually more approachable for women than a top-down tribunal, Devika argued. “The tribunal is imagined as a supra body”, outside the film industry, she said. “Some of us actually think that you’re cutting off access to justice. Fewer women will be likely to complain if such mechanisms are set up.”

The need to set up another tribunal despite existing mechanisms which are supposed to tackle cases of sexual crimes at the workplace also raises a broader question, Devika said.

“As Indian citizens, how can we say that the existing law won’t protect women just because they work in the cinema?”

The WCC has been posting what it argues are solutions and recommendations on their social media pages following the report’s release.

Beyond naming and shaming

“After the report came out, the questions have been: ‘Who is the perpetrator? Who are these men? Why are they being protected?'” said Nidhi Suresh, an Indian journalist who covered the 2017 case in great detail for The News Minute.

She explained that actresses who have come forward with public allegations following the report’s release have lost work opportunities.

This was echoed by filmmaker and WCC founding member Anjali Menon. The Press Trust of India, a news agency, quoted her saying: “It is true that we have paid the price of losing work opportunities when we spoke up, but over the last seven years, we have consistently made our points and we now have immense support from the media, the legal community and the public”.

Suresh told Al Jazeera that she understood the risks involved. If names of alleged perpetrators are revealed, the identity of victims could be easy to discern too, she said. “If they are releasing the names of the perpetrators, it’s going to have to be done in a very responsible manner,” she said.

Either way, Suresh said that the movement that exploded after the Hema Committee report and the subsequent allegations by other women was about more than just naming and shaming perpetrators. What’s needed, she said, are structural changes to how the film industry treats women.

“One conversation that’s been happening a lot here is people have been comparing this movement to the Weinstein movement,” she said, referring to the movement that grew in 2017 when more than 80 women came forward, accusing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual abuse.

The Kerala film industry #MeToo movement is not just about exposing sexual predators in the industry, she said, but reshaping how the industry is structured as well as how it treats women.

“This is about trying to rethink safer workspace culture”.

Source: Al Jazeera